Elk Grove may be on road to rail service in plan linking Stockton to Sacramento airport
A Laguna Boulevard train station could be in Elk Grove’s future, the city one link in a chain of proposed Sacramento-area sites extending rail service north from Stockton into the Capital and Sacramento International Airport.
The Stockton-based San Joaquin Regional Rail Commission has plans to connect its passenger rail service from Stockton to Sacramento, with the proposed Elk Grove station a part of its Valley Rail Sacramento Extension Project. The project and proposed Elk Grove site have a 2023 target date.
Other potential sites along the Sacramento extension include sites near Sacramento City College, midtown Sacramento, north Sacramento and in Natomas, with a shuttle connection from the Natomas site to Sacramento International Airport.
Elk Grove residents will hear the details at a virtual community open house 5:30 p.m. Aug. 26. Register online at bit.ly/ElkGroveStation.
Rail commission officials will take what they hear to inform the project’s design and environmental analysis.
The proposed station north of the intersection of Dwight Road and Laguna Boulevard in west Elk Grove is in the design and review phase, say San Joaquin Joint Powers Authority and San Joaquin Regional Rail Commission officials. The agencies are partnering on the project to expand Amtrak San Joaquins and Altamont Corridor Express, or ACE, service north into the Sacramento region.
The station would be along the existing Union Pacific Railroad track that stretches from Stockton north to Marysville.
The station would be unattended, but have a new platform, parking lot and landscaping. Benches, lighting, security cameras and emergency call boxes are part of the design plan as well as ticketing machines and bicycle storage facilities.
Crews also will replace old Union Pacific track with 3,900 feet of new track. Another 10,000 feet of siding track also are proposed from just south of Elk Grove Boulevard near Franklin Boulevard to just south of Big Horn Boulevard at Laguna Creek.
Elk Grove has long envisioned commuter rail service that would take advantage of Amtrak’s existing San Joaquins line, with officials and transportation advocates here seeing a station as an option long overdue.
The city had studied plans for a station since at least 2008. Early plans for an Old Town Elk Grove site off Elk Grove Boulevard failed to materialize.
By 2014, the city had drawn up a master plan and shopped for federal transportation grants to build a station just south of Sheldon Road, a site bounded to the west by Union Pacific rail and Elk Grove-Florin Road to the east and straddling Whitehouse Creek. That project included park-and-ride lots, bus connections and rail, but never came to pass.
The San Joaquin Regional Rail Commission is familiar to local rail passengers to the Bay Area and into the San Joaquin Valley whether they know it or not. The agency manages the busy Amtrak San Joaquins route with its round-trip service from Sacramento to Oakland and south to Bakersfield as well as a large network of bus routes in Northern California and western Nevada.
Its ACE train service carries commuters from Stockton and the San Joaquin Valley into San Jose and Silicon Valley.
This story was originally published August 16, 2021 at 3:41 PM.
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